A look at CKFR and MOBI from the biller side.
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Talking the Talk With Patricia Mulholland of Northeast Utilities
Getting in deep with EBPP
By Bill Block
Bill Block conducted an interview with Patricia Mulholland, a customer business operations analyst and the business owner for the EBPP application at Northeast Utilities, in order to learn more about the service and how it was developed and launched. Patricia reports to Bob Johnston, the manager of consumer affairs and performance improvement at Northeast Utilities. Mr. Johnston has responsibility for improvements and enhancements to the customer service applications at Northeast Utilities. Following, you’ll find Mulholland’s discussion of her organization’s experience with implementing an online bill presentment and payment service.
Block: What were your objectives for the online bill presentment and payment service?
Mulholland: The obvious objective was to allow residential and small commercial customers to view and pay their bills online. We also wanted our customer service representatives (CSR) to view the customers’ bills online. We have a customer service system that allows the CSR to see screens that have billing elements displayed but they’re not the actual customers’ bills. So, if a customer asks a question about something, using the actual bill as their reference, our customer service representatives cannot easily understand what it is that the customer is asking.
Another major objective was to eliminate our microfiche and provide the CSR something that was easier to use and more cost effective. Because we now store the bill in an electronic data warehouse, we can eliminate the cost of microfiche creation, storage and retrieval.
We expect as a result of this project to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, reduce operating costs such as printing and postage and expand the use of the Northeast Utilities Web site. We also expect our EBPP solution to help us with billing because restructuring is causing the bill format to change frequently due to an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions.
Block: Did you have specific requests from consumers for an EBPP capability?
Mulholland: Yes, we were asked many times by our customers via our Web site to provide alternative payment and billing methods.
Block: Does Northeast Utilities still print and mail bills for the people that have signed up for the online EBPP service?
. Mulholland: No, once you sign up for the EBPP service you get a paper bill for one month and the next month it’s all electronic. This is one area we get some cost savings with reductions in paper, postage and payment processing expenses. With our EBPP service, the consumer essentially receives an exact copy of the bill in an electronic format, which if they desire can be printed. The printing and paper cost is then transferred to the consumer if they require a paper copy of their electronic bill. However, most of our customers are keeping the bill in an electronic format.
Block: Did you have any specific economic justification or return on investment goal in mind as you began this project?
Mulholland: Eliminating the microfiche production exclusively funded the development and launch of the EBPP service. The savings in printing, postage and payment processing provided additional value on top of this justification.
Block: Could you discuss the timeline associated with your implementation process?
Mulholland: Our concept process started in November of 1998. Evaluation and selection of software was completed in January of 1999. The software was installed in March of 1999, and we implemented our EBPP Web site for internal use in July of 1999. In total, it was six months from the time we decided we would do it and when we actually were able to view bills and pay them online.
We put the EBPP service into production in October of 1999 for external customers. We ran an internal pilot from July through October in order to do an internal audit. Then we rolled the service out to our customer service representatives so they would have an opportunity to take a look at it before we went into production in October.
Block: Any recommendations that you would like to share with others embarking on this in terms of project organization?
Mulholland: Yes, I would. Make sure that you have a project manager who is dedicated to the project and really does understand project management. I think that our team leader kept the team on track and was responsible for all of the components being completed on time. Because we had three companies involved, strong project management was even more important. For the balance of the team, we had software developers, client service representatives and management involved from Mobius and CheckFree. The other members of the team from NU consisted of representatives from IT and Web development, and I represented customer service and marketing.
Block: Did you have to resolve any regulatory issues with your legal department on the EBPP service?
Mulholland: Prior to embarking on this, the legislature had already given us an indication of what had to be on our bill face, so we knew that we had to maintain certain things if we went to an electronic environment. We did not get regulatory approval until December of 1999 after we had a product that was in production. We were confident that what we had produced was in fact what they would agree was going to cover the same needs as what they control in the paper environment.
Bill inserts are also a regulatory requirement that customers must be able to get off the online bill summary. Our customers were happy with what we provided, and they were also happy because they got to see 12 months of history on a rotating basis. In many cases, a customer might throw the bill and the inserts into the garbage and then have a question. Now they can go our to the Web site bill and just click right to it.
Block: Do you send an email notification to a residential customer that their bill is available for review and payment?
Mulholland: CheckFree provides that as part of their service to Northeast Utilities. Four days after the bill is available on the Internet, if the customer hasn’t accessed the bill, CheckFree will send them an email reminding them that the bill was delivered. Confirming delivery was a regulatory requirement because we must be able to demonstrate that the customer actually got the bill.
Block: Can you describe the component parts of your EBPP solution?
Mulholland: We already had a document repository where we were using the Mobius software. CheckFree receives an EDI transmission containing the billing data from us and holds the summary billing information in their own hosting environment. We send the summary information so a customer will see their name, address, account number and how much is owed on the bill summary page with hyperlinks to our Web site.
When the customer pays their bill, they’re actually paying on the CheckFree server and site. If the customer wants to view the billing detail, then they follow a URL link from CheckFree to Northeast Utilities through the NU firewall in order to pick up the actual bill, which is stored in the Mobius view direct product on NU servers. A customer can hyperlink right to our customer service section or anyplace else on our Web right from the summary bill presentation site at CheckFree.
Block: Does CheckFree distribute your bill to other third parties like a bank or Web portal?
Mulholland: Yes, CheckFree does send some of our bills to other Web locations for posting and payment. I’d have to check the number but I think there’s over 100 places where a customer could view and pay their bill.
Block: Was the ability to have your bills paid at other locations one of the original requirements that came in from your customers?
Mulholland: No, we did not have specific requests for this capability, but everything I’d read indicated to me that customers were going to want to go to one site and be able to pay more than one bill in order for it to be attractive to them. We are only one of 10 to 20 bills in a household, so we wanted to partner with someone who was doing the aggregating and who was selling their product to banks since customers already have a very intimate relationship with their bank.
. Block: Do you have customers of yours that are paying at sites other than the CheckFree site?
Mulholland: Absolutely, I don’t think I have any current statistics, but I would say that two-thirds of our customers are paying someplace other than our site.
Block: Do you have some features or functionality that you’re planning on adding to the bill presentment application?
Mulholland: We are a regulated monopoly, but to the degree that we can, we would like to be able to market products and services to the customer using the online bill summary. So, that was one of the things that we pretty much left for our future. We left enough spacing in the way we designed our online bill so that we could do some interactive marketing. We also are looking to make Web site enhancements unrelated to the bill so our customers are able to do account updates and to interact with us and actually accomplish a piece of work without talking to us.
Block: What would you say your adoption rate is right now?
Mulholland: There are about 240,000 customers who could sign up for the service out of our entire population. As of now, we have 4,560 customers enrolled.
Block: What kind of things have you done to let people know that this service is available and also to increase your adoption rate?
Mulholland: We would like to increase our adoption rate, but the marketing budget does not include any money for this activity. I am able to use our bill inserts now and again, which already has a fixed cost. The percentage of customers who have enrolled based on the bill insert is pretty much what we normally get from anything we place in a bill insert. But, obviously, it would be nice if we could do some additional things to drive up the adoption, so we are looking at opportunities with other local and common billers to promote online bill presentment and payment. We also benefit from other billers promoting their service as long as the customer takes a look at the other billers they can pay at that site.
Block: What has been the customer reaction to the new EBPP service?
Mulholland: Actually, I thought we would get more people wanting to know more about the security before they were willing to give out their bank accounts, and I received almost no emails on that topic.
Block: And that surprised you?
Mulholland: It really did surprise me that that security wasn’t an issue. Maybe the CheckFree name or the association with Northeast Utilities created a confidence factor. Some of the emails that I get are because each application or each customer setup at home could be slightly different and the browsers are a little bit different. For the most part, even those people were willing to stick with it all the way until it was resolved.
Block: How did you find the technology and service partners that you selected?
Mulholland: We already had a good relationship with CheckFree. We knew they were good at moving payments and we also knew that they were the back end processors for a number of banks in our area. We also already had software that belonged to Mobius Corporation. And as would happen, Mobius and CheckFree had a conference in our local area where they discussed Internet billing. So this just happened to work out very well; they already had a relationship with one another and were out there promoting the idea of Internet bill presentment.
Block: Were there any real technical challenges you had to address clearly with your partners during the process?
Mulholland: Yes, there were a couple of things. Obviously, security was an important issue to us and also there were issues at the firewall; we wanted to be able to control who was getting in through our firewall because they’re getting right to the data in the archive. We wanted to be sure that a user can only reach their bill and not any other bill.
Another challenge was the lack of a standard PC client. If a customer goes out to our Web site, there’s a "frequently asked question" section which tells you the PC requirements to use the service, but this has been as issue for several customers. Another area that can be a challenge is activation. How does the customer activate or deactivate for EBPP? Is it a CheckFree responsibility or is it an NU responsibility? Block: Do you have any recommendations to others in the planning stages of an EBPP service?
Mulholland: Because I’d like to see higher adoption rates, I would try to get greater marketing support to improve customer acceptance of the EBPP service. As an electric utility, we do not have a big marketing group. We’re changing in that regard, but for the last few years it hasn’t been a big impetus for us. You use electricity, you’re going to get a bill. Try to find out what you can do to get in a household and what you can offer for that household to want to go with you and then stay with you. What makes this service different for us than for some other billers is that we do not expect that by implementing an EBPP service we will increase sales, but we fully expect to save money and improve our customer service.
Some important points that I learned in my discussion with Pat Mulholland at Northeast Utilities:
Northeast Utilities used existing relationships with CheckFree and Mobius to develop and launch an EBPP service. A great starting point for your own EBPP assessment process may be your existing vendor relationships.
Business justification for an EBPP service can come from less then obvious areas. Northeast Utilities was able to eliminate the cost of microfiche, a part of their document archive solution, which paid for the implementation of the EBPP service.
Northeast Utilities is developing some creative ideas on driving adoption rates, which involve working with other local common billers on joint promotion and leveraging the adoption strategies of other billers and consumer service providers to increase the visibility of its own EBPP services. |
